


Respective Grooming

by MishiTamashi



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Fluff, Homestuck Rarepair Swap, M/M, possible ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-21
Updated: 2014-04-21
Packaged: 2018-01-20 05:38:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1498675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MishiTamashi/pseuds/MishiTamashi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the game ends and both universes are returned to their formal glory both the trolls and humans are busy settling themselves into their positions in society be it assimilation into an actual functioning societal structure or trying to rearrange one completely. Karkat is taking one of his many visits to Earth, specifically to visit Dirk, wherein he entrusts his matesprit to trim his nails and grooming ensues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Respective Grooming

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jadebloods](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jadebloods/gifts).



Impatient nails drummed over the rough plastic surface of what was supposed to be a food tray but had now become the designated grooming station at Karkat and Dirk’s convenience. Typically Karkat would be the one giving his matesprit a typical session of flush caregiving. Buffing his nails and making sure they looked nice, were clean, and he was kind enough to throw in a hand massage on one while the other dried. Now however it was Dirk’s turn and for good reason, for one Karkat never gave his nails over just to anyone, it’d taken him sweeps of grooming to get them to the proud and pointed state they were in. Him being a lowblood he had to learn to care for his nails on his own, being a mutant he had to be especially careful when it came to things of this nature as they could very well mean life or death at some point.

Of course this wasn’t a problem so much anymore, after the game ended he’d taken his rightful spot in the Empress’ army and trained to fully become the leader of this generation’s Threshcutioners. With Feferi now in charge there was a lot of work to be done and he didn’t have a lot of time to piddle around on Earth for romantic purposes or anything else so he tries to make the visits special and Dirk seems to appreciate that though at the moment all the human was doing was irritating him. His eyes staring with purpose into the dumbass pointy sunglasses that covered half of Dirk’s goddamn face along with some of the general area _around_ his face. “Are you going to file my nails for the entirety of my visit or are you just trying to savor the moment? The moment’s been savored on my end just to let you know.” He criticized.

Their general association was everything but instantaneous, when their two groups met after everything was said and done they were both much too busy with what was going on in their inner circle of friends to even begin to be concerned about the other. And then they spoke and mutually irritated each other but conversed more until they both came to the conclusion that they should try for some kind of romantic affiliation. Which was going well enough, they certainly had a fair amount in common and a nice amount to teach each other. Karkat thinks he can teach Dirk how to clip and file a fucking nail but now all seemed hopeless.

“I could do a halfass job on them and we could go on with the rest of the day.” Dirk defended though he was feeling a little uneasy about cutting them down. Should he leave a point remaining or just round them out completely? He could just leave a little bit of the nail extending the tip of his finger just so Karkat still had something to sink into someone if he needed to, from what he was told of Threshcutioners and Feferi’s assignments for them Karkat might need them if it came to hand-to-hand combat.

“You act like I expect you to do a perfect job in the first place,” Karkat snorted, unoccupied hand ceasing it’s drumming as he snorted. “I’m having you do it because I’m cutting them for you unless you enjoy all the battle scars I leave you with. Even if you did I don’t care and they’re getting cut anyway it’s just cuter if you do it. Supposedly anyway, I’ll look at my dear matesprit trimming my nails for their convenience endearingly but then I’ll sit down with a file and fix every uneven edge you leave me with so I look partly presentable after you botch my hard work.”

Now, a bit to Karkat’s satisfaction, blond eyebrows pointed down in the same tilt Dirk’s shades gave making them almost perfectly parallel. Well now Dirk was going to continue filing his nails for the sake of taking all day. “I’m not even going to botch your nails, I understand _why_ you’re doing it but I’m not made of glass and maybe I do like my so-called ‘battle scars’.” He did kind of, he knew they weren’t on purpose but they were a nice burning little reminder that faded away after a while. There was one thin line, hardly noticeable but there all the same that traced from just behind Dirk’s arm and down to his side. His mentioning of such was followed a week or two thereafter with Karkat wanting to do this.

“See this is why it’s supposedly cute, it was a lot cuter in my head and that’s not translating here because for one you’re overthinking it which I should’ve expected. Silly me, I guess I know better to not anticipate your internal monologue of what should only take a little less than half an hour to do partly right and you’re just making it difficult. You’ve already spent fifteen minutes filing one fucking nail, regardless of whether or not you do it I’m going to do it.”

“It just doesn’t make a lot of sense for the head Thresh to have short, trimmed nails. Plus I liked them as they were,” Now his eyebrows leveled out as he shrugged, he did appreciate the gesture but still Dirk hesitated in picking up the nail clippers and a steady scratching filled the room as tanned fingers swept the file over Karkat’s nail. Steadily it scraped away layer after layer of sweeps of his tedious work, he sighed and leaned against the side of the couch and let it the scratching fill some space.

Karkat thought over that and stopped backseat grooming and made some kind of motion with his hand to let Dirk do what he wanted before moving the conversation along. Besides the whole point was to make them to Dirk’s convenience so he can do whatever he wants. “Either way I’m also here to catch up,” Not that they didn’t tell each other almost everything anyway. “Are your headaches getting better?”

“Not better so much as they’re becoming more manageable.” Came the simple response, which wasn’t a yes so it was a no. Moving from total isolation and near perpetual silence to a slightly less quiet environment with his friends to a full bustling city complete with noise pollution of all sorts took a toll on Dirk for the first few weeks. Rather than moving Dirk seemed to be completely convinced that he’d get over the migraines he got periodically, for the moment Karkat would settle for calling him stupid and leaving it at that. Later on if it didn’t get better he’d take action.

“I’m still not seeing the problem with you moving your hive complex somewhere. You’ve have more privacy, it’d be quieter, and probably a lot better for you. I’m not saying pick a single field and squat your ass in the middle of it but just to move down instead of taking all this shit in at one time.

“I actually like it though,” Dirk admitted, now using the coarser side of the file and getting more pressure and thus more progress. “Sure the noisiness is annoying sometimes but it’s something else to focus on.”

Karkat could only hum in response and watch him, he was talking but still focused on what he was doing. “Still you could move back and forth, that’s a completely reasonable thing to do just to give yourself a break every now and again.”

“You’ll find out yourself but it does it quieter at night and if I’m really trying to focus on something then I just listen to music and drown it all out.” From there he didn’t waste time shifting gears not giving Karkat enough time to respond before asking. “What about you? How’s it going being the leader of something you strived for as a kid?”

Karkat noted that he was quick to get the subject off himself but also snorted at the way it was phrased. “Thanks for making it sound like some huge grandiose thing, I appreciate it because I don’t brag on myself and my new position enough but it’s become more of a peacekeeper if anything. Some kind of weird cross between Feferi asking my opinions on lowblood affairs and how to go about shit like that along with keeping everyone from flipping their shit among mostly lowbloods because my people skills are the best out of our entire group,”

“Obviously,” Dirk cut in while Karkat took a breath, he was making steady progress now but Karkat kept his gaze up so he didn’t start to poke at whatever Dirk did.

Taking this time to vent as he needed and complain to Dirk about the close crew that he has to work with, naturally having his complaints over them he was still talking by the time Dirk had actually finished his nails but, like a good flushmate he didn’t interrupt. Or at least he did when Karkat started to repeat himself and was complaining for the sake of it rather than getting things off his chest.

They were noticeably shorter, though the point remained just moved down a few precious centimeters. “This is good, I can still fight with this.” A fair job at least for someone that would be grooming a troll for the first time though he wasn’t exactly sure why he would expect anything else from Dirk. Ever since Karkat sprung it on him he probably would’ve been doing whatever research he could to the tee.

Dirk having his affirmative was a relief, not only pleasing for himself but for his boyfriend which was always what he aimed at. That if he did get that right and by some miracle Karkat didn’t actually manage to find a flaw in his work he would propose his own ritual. After all Karkat had trusted him with something he’d spent nearly his whole life working on so now it was his turn to open up. “Then if we’re done with the manicures then I wanted us to try something else. I guess technically it’d be grooming related and I’m glad you brought a change of clothes because I wanted us to shower together.”

Judging from Karkat’s reaction of eyebrows perched and at the ready above his shifting eyes he didn’t quite get the point of them showering together but thankfully he kept his mouth shut after processing it for a while. It wasn’t as though it would be the first step to them seeing each other naked, no the awkward and only privately mentioned (and even then rarely) moments of their first romp was years ago. Dirk’s shower time was his private time among all else, that was when he sat and thought letting his mind trail and trace over a million possibilities and having his own silent philosophical conversations with himself. The murmur of words hardly audible over the spray of water, it was where he thought of a lot of conversations starters and regretted a lot of the shit he’d said through the course of the day and could properly reflect on that.

“Yeah, of course,” He finally answered while the tray between them was being moved off to the side. “That sounds really good actually. I know you like to sit in your shower and submit your body to the water until you become one with it so I’m not going to stay in there that long but it’d be nice to do together up until that point.” Karkat stood up and stretched, arms popping as his hands balled up into tight fists.

After the clothing and towels were gathered they made small talk, waiting for the water to warm up which didn’t take long with the modified water heater Dirk had prepared mostly for his own purposes and was even more grateful for at this moment. His shades sat on the counter next to the sink giving Karkat an unobstructed view of the rest of his tanned and freckled face.

He was pretty tall, not overly so but even with the growth spurt Karkat hit when it struck the middle of his eighth sweep he beat him horns and all. Gray hands helped push water over his back followed shortly by a sudsy towel. He could see why Dirk stayed in here so long it was nice, the heat from the water and the sound of the water hitting the hard porcelain floor and tiled walls. Then the mist would hang in the heavy and willed you to just relax. Showering sure as hell wasn’t like this on Alternia or on the ship, sure it was nice but it wasn’t as nice.

“Do you think I don’t spend enough time here?” Came the question, it was something he worried about after all. Only so much time could be made but he wasn’t going to let his relationship suffer because of that and he really did try. Dirk let himself be washed and answered honestly.

“Sometimes.” He looked at the wall in front of him, eyes looking at the lines between the tiles and settling on individual bumps and divots. “I miss you but I understand what’s going on. It’s not like you spend years off doing your business which is really important and I should learn to give people space anyway.”

It wasn’t what he said but the way it was said that made Karkat frown, with some kind of lingering taste of the past in the other’s mouth that he could taste all too well through association. Like sitting next to some asshole that was smoking and the wind blew it all in your face so you could taste the ash in your throat. “If you were getting on my nerves trust me enough to say something, it’s not like I wouldn’t be honest with you anyway. If you want to talk to me or see me then fucking tell me you prick don’t just sit there like I’m just anyone. I’ve got a shit-ton of time outside of the stuff I do and I don’t even have a kismesis to worry about sat-“

“Then what do you think? Do you think you could stand to spend more time here dicking around? It’s not just what _I_ want it’s what _you_ want too.” Dirk cut in though Karkat’s hands didn’t stutter on his back and just moved to his shoulders.

“Duh I want to spend more time here and I do miss you. Fuck me for trying to be sure.” He mumbled and pressed a kiss to the middle of his back, soap or not. Dirk sighed and turned around, hair all slicked down and face just a tad red from the heat of the water and touched Karkat’s face. Thumb and index holding that face between them as they stared at each other. Karkat broke first mostly because the pressure on his face would gradually increase, pushing his lips together. “You awkward fuck.” He snapped though it came muffled making Dirk grin, his solitary dimple making its daily appearance then going out of view when he leaned down the few inches to press his own lips against Karkat’s.

**Author's Note:**

> I sincerely hope that you (And anyone else) enjoyed this Jadebloods, it was fun to write if not a little bit stressful since I mostly write as Dave and I hope that Dirk still read as Dirk and not the other Strider. Dirkat is a grand ship and I got to throw in a few little headcanons. Thanks for your fun requests, picking just one was hard! I do hope that you have a wonderful day!


End file.
